After an escalated public fight with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, now xAI founder Elon Musk has offered rare praise for rival Google. The Tesla CEO has publicly acknowledged the dominance of Google in the field of artificial intelligence. In a post shared on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) Musk said that presently Google has the highest probability of being the leader in the field of AI because of its biggest compute and data advantage.

Elon Musk praises Google

Musk’s comments came as part of a larger conversation on the state of the AI industry. “For the foreseeable future, the major AI companies will continue to prosper, as will @xAI. There is just so much to do! Outside of real-world AI, Google has the biggest compute (and data) advantage for now, so currently has the highest probability of being the leader. That may change in a few years,” Elon Musk wrote in a post shared on X.Google’s AI strength comes with its massive investments in data centre chips with $85 billion in capital expenditures this year. Apart from this, the tech giant also has 14% ownership in AI startup Anthropic.

Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: The ongoing war of words

Elon Musk’s praise for Google comes during the ongoing fight with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a heated escalation of their ongoing rivalry, Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded barbs over allegations of bias in Apple’s App Store rankings. The fight started after Musk, founder of xAI, posted on Twitter, accusing Apple of manipulating its App Store rankings to favor OpenAI’s ChatGPT, making it “impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1.” Musk labeled this an “unequivocal antitrust violation” and threatened immediate legal action against Apple. At the time, ChatGPT held the top spot on the U.S. App Store’s free apps list, while xAI’s Grok ranked fifth.To this, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman swiftly countered on X, calling Musk’s claims “remarkable” given allegations that Musk manipulates X’s algorithms to boost his own companies and suppress competitors. Altman referenced a 2023 Platformer report alleging Musk tweaked X’s algorithm to prioritize his tweets after a post by President Biden outperformed his. Altman challenged Musk to sign an affidavit denying such practices, promising an apology if Musk complied.